Formed in December of 2010, Death Grips is an Alternative Hip Hop group consisting of rapper Stefan Burnett (a.k.a. MC Ride), drummer Zach Hill (of the band Hella), and producer Andy Morin. Their music is a unique blend of noise, samples, noise, loudvocals, noise, and subverting and deconstructing almost every Hip Hop trope under the sun, while their live shows are infamous for their sheer, nightmarish ferocity. On October 1st, the band revealed that Death Grips' most recent release had been pushed back by their record label. In response, the band released NO LOVE DEEP WEB for free.Their discography is as follows:
Death Grips (EP), 2011
Exmilitary (mixtape), 2011
The Money Store, 2012
NO LOVE DEEP WEB, expected to be released in October of 2012, leaked by the band on October 1st, 2012
All Drummers Are Animals: Zach Hill plays the hell out of those drums. On studio recordings, they tend to be distorted, brickwalled, chopped, and compressed to almost frightening degrees. When they play live, though, he produces all those sounds by absolutely brutalizing the drum kit.
The cover for NO LOVE DEEP WEB takes this Up to Eleven.
Darker and Edgier: NO LOVE DEEP WEB (somehow) manages to be this despite the band already having some of the darkest output of any rap group.
Drone Of Dread: Frequiently used in the instrumentals, notably in "Guillotine" and incorporated into almost every track in some way on NO LOVE DEEP WEB.
Establishing Character Moment: "Full Moon (Death Classic)" was the first song they ever dropped, and it pretty much sums up what the internet was in for.
Executive Meddling: Epic Records attempted to push back the date of NO LOVE DEEP WEB's release to some time in 2013, when the Alternate Reality Game they'd been running had hyped the original release date of October 23rd for quite some time. Death Grips responded by immediately leaking the album, with a photograph of a penis as the cover.
Fan Adjective: Noided, a word that's been around since the 90s to mean "annoyed", but has been repurposed in the lyrics of "I've Seen Footage" to mean "paranoid". In practice, most Death grips fans use it in the context of "excited" or "psyched".
Follow the Leader: They've already started what is essentially a new genre, or at least a new concept of combining noise and harsh noise with hip hop. Clipping is a band that already follows in a similar fashion.
Genre Busting: Good luck finding anything remotely similar... Yet....
Getting Crap Past the Radar: The music video for "Culture Shock" is a tiny distorted videoscreen superimposed over a headstone, looping repeatedly. It's hard to see, but the footage on the screen is from a pornographic sex scene.
At one point the ARG had somebody buying dog aspirin off the deep web.
As it turns out, none of them were. After the password was figured out for a .RAR containing what was thought to be a new EP (complete with a tracklist and everything),only for it to be Tim & Shim Do The Raps Out Of Their Mouths. The entire ARG was fake, and in the video they thanked Flatlander for "Subconsciously playing along." Wat. Huh.
New Sound Album: While they still fall under the umbrella of industrial hip-hop, each of their albums is this compared to the previous one. Exmilitary was a lot more hook- and beat-driven than their debut. The Money Store was considerably more electronic and less sample-based than Exmilitary, and NO LOVE DEEP WEB eschews catchy hooks in general in exchange for a deeper focus on atmosphere.
The video for "Come Up And Get Me" features roughly nine minutes of silence at the beginning set to black & white footage of MC Ride going crazy.
The instrumental for "Hunger Games" uses this.
Flatlander's website, ever since he's been missing, usually consists of a single cryptic phrase or image at a time, occasionally with hidden images in the code or whatever the ARG calls for.
Sampling: From Nancy Sinatra to Black Flag to Link Wray to Arthur Brown's "Fire" to voice clips of Charles Manson. "System Blower" even sampled its distinctive bridge from a Venus Williams tennis serve.
Sensory Abuse: Sometimes, mostly on Exmilitary, which is probably the loudest of their releases. The odd, screechy synth section towards the end of "Guillotine" stands out.
Surprisingly Gentle Song: For a given value of "gentle"; "Culture Shock" and "Get Got" are fairly chill and closer to traditional hip-hop than the rest of their output.
"Artificial Death in the West" is a very spacious and chilled out song, especially coming at the end of NO LOVE DEEP WEB.
Three Chords and the Truth: NO LOVE DEEP WEB is kind of like their version of this. The majority of the sounds are produced from basic synthesizers and 808 drums, and the only sample is on "Whammy". Hill's live drums are nowhere to be found.
Uncommon Time: "Death Grips (Next Grips)" and "Spread Eagle Across The Block".
"Hunger Games" is a subversion. It's in 4/4 time, but the rhythm is... uh.... batshit insane...
Vulgar Humor: The leaked version of NO LOVE DEEP WEB features cover art that is nothing more than a photograph of a penis.
What Happened to the Mouse?: Andy Morin has been missing since October 2012 and it has yet to be answered as if he left the band, is taking a break, is sick, or anything.
The reasonable theory is that Andy is representing the band in their lawsuit Sony due to their contract breach. The band still needs to make money, so Zach and Stefan are touring without him.
Flatlander has finally reappeared, as of the band's 2013 SXSW performance.
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